Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge head capable of discharging a liquid from discharge ports by using energy-generating elements and to a liquid discharge apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, liquid discharge apparatuses discharging a liquid such as an ink have been used not only for home printing but also for business printing for retail photos or the like, and industrial printing such as electronic circuit printing and panel display printing, and are used in wider fields. For such liquid discharge apparatuses for business use and industrial use, a liquid discharge head enabling high speed recording is strongly demanded. To achieve this demand, it is effective to drive energy-generating elements for discharging an ink at a higher frequency or to use, as the liquid discharge head, a long body line head having a width adapted to the width of a recording medium.
To increase the width of a liquid discharge head, a plurality of recording element substrates having discharge ports and energy-generating elements are typically arranged in a longer direction. Specifically, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-526553 discloses a method of arranging a plurality of recording element substrates on an integral support member. Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-279939 discloses a method of arranging and installing, on an integral support plate, a plurality of head modules each including a recording element substrate on a support member.
When a line head has a larger dimension in the longer direction in the structure of such an integral support member as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-526553, the support member is difficult to prepare at a high geometric accuracy, and a resulting image may be distorted in the longer direction. With such a head module structure as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-279939, adjacent recording element substrates are placed on different support members at the connecting part between the adjacent recording element substrates, and thus the faces of the recording element substrates are likely to cause inclination at the connecting part. This may vary the angle of a liquid discharged from discharge ports to cause defects such as unevenness in an image at connecting parts.
In view of the above circumstances, the present invention is intended to provide a long body liquid discharge head including a plurality of arranged recording element substrates and to provide a liquid discharge apparatus, and the liquid discharge head and the liquid discharge apparatus enable recording of high quality images.